


right as rain

by linumlea



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Canon - Manga, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Manga Spoilers, and they were ROOMMATES
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:50:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22843552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linumlea/pseuds/linumlea
Summary: Shouyou is coming back to Japan. It must have been Kenma’s masochism that conjured the idea of suggesting that Shouyou can stay in the unused room in Kenma’s house while Shouyou is trying out for pro teams in Tokyo.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou/Kozume Kenma
Comments: 4
Kudos: 83
Collections: Haikyuu Valentines





	right as rain

**Author's Note:**

> hi Ori, happy belated valentines day! here is my gift for you for the exchange, hope you will like it!  
> the fic got a little bit out of hand wordcount wise and i didn't manage to finish the whole thing in time to publish it, but i hope to post the second part of the fic before monday!

Kenma willed his leg to stay still while he sat around waiting and glancing at the clock every minute or so. The message from Shouyou, ‘just landed, im in tokyo!!’, came two hours before. Shouyou should be there any minute, but there was still no sign of him.

So peculiar it’s going to be, to finally see him in person again after two long years - he has seen him in photos of course, on video even, heard his voice rendered somewhat tinny by the speakers; but the real, unfiltered Shouyou’s presence? It’s been a while; it felt weird to think that he has been so far away this whole time.

But they’ve gone without seeing each other in person for months before, and what are two years if not just a multiplication of a couple of months? And Shouyou was always Shouyou, no matter how much time has passed. He was still going to be Shouyou now.

Through the open window came the sound of a car slowing down. Kenma shot up and walked to the entrance doors, stopping in the doorframe. Shouyou was just getting out of the car when he saw Kenma and his face lit up. He was so tan, unlike ever before, the white of his shirt stark against his skin.

Kenma’s heart kept beating out an unsteady, peculiar rhythm.

“Kenma!” Shouyou cried out, waving both of his arms. The driver of the car, Shouyou’s teammate - Yamaguchi - got out too and raised his hand in a greeting that Kenma returned automatically. 

He didn’t know how it was physically possible because just a split second before Shouyou had been standing by the car but in the next Kenma was nearly toppled over when Shouyou threw his arms around Kenma’s shoulders and hugged him so tightly Kenma found it difficult to breathe.

“Uh,” Kenma said. He hesitantly reached to pat Shouyou’s back. “Welcome home?”

All that it did was make Shouyou squeeze harder. Over his shoulder Kenma met Yamaguchi’s gaze who shrugged unhelpfully and went to get Shouyou’s things out of the trunk. 

When Shouyou finally let go, pulling himself an arm-length away, it became apparent that he was dead tired, shadowy half-moons under his eyes and a slight tremble to his hands, his figure saturated with exhaustion after the long, long flight. 

“You need to rest,” Yamaguchi told Shouyou as he got back into the car, voicing Kenma’s own thoughts. “Don’t go running around.”

“Yes, sir, captain, sir!” Shouyou saluted.

Yamaguchi sighed, a small, resigned smile ghosting over his face. He nodded at Kenma, waved at Shouyou, and drove off. Shouyou waved with both of his hands until the car turned the corner and disappeared and then his arms dropped back to his sides.

“I can’t decide if I’m more hungry or tired,” Shouyou said. “I’m… tired? That doesn’t sound right.”

  
  


All in all, Shouyou moved into Kenma’s house with barely anything. A suitcase, a bag, a backpack was all that they had to bring inside. 

Back when Shouyou had let Kenma know he would be back in Japan in a few months time, Kenma had asked where Shouyou planned to stay if he wanted to be available for tryouts. On the screen of Kenma’s laptop Shouyou’s face had fallen a little as he said that he didn’t know. It would’ve been best to be in Tokyo, but the rooms in Tokyo were so insanely expensive and since Shouyou didn’t even know if any team would accept him there-

Why not stay in my house, Kenma had asked, the words dropping out of his mouth with no prior thought or consideration. Shouyou’s eyes had widened and he had looked so hopeful and happy that to Kenma it was unthinkable to revoke the invitation.

Nevermind that living with Shouyou was going to be twice as hard as with just about anyone else. But that was on Kenma and Kenma’s unwieldy feelings alone.

Kenma was just going to have to deal with the fact that the empty room at the back of house would no longer be empty.

“Thanks for letting me stay,” Shouyou said, dropping his bag on the floor and looking around his new room with curiosity. 

“It’s no problem. You know there is space here,” Kenma said, looking to the side.

“I’m not going to impose on you long, I swear. I’m sure I’ll find something sooner than later.”

Kenma reached out, tangling his fingers into Shouyou’s hair. He has done that once during the second training camp on an impulse and ever since then he looked forward to every chance of doing so again. Shouyou for his part not only didn’t seem to mind but appeared to like it, lighting up whenever Kenma did it. “Don’t worry about it. You should stay as long as you need and want to.”

Shouyou smiled at him gratefully.

“There is a futon in that closet there. You should eat something and rest. You look like you’re about to drop.”

Shouyou shook his head. “No way I’m going to sleep,” he said, resolute, but after a moment of hesitation started pulling out the futon anyway and unfolding it. “I’m finally back home! It’s been so long, I want to savour every second of it. And now I’m going to be living with you for a little while - best thing that could’ve happened to me. A series of fortunate events, this is.”

Kenma shrugged at that and left Shouyou to his own devices for a few minutes while he searched for that spare towel that he was sure he left out specifically for Shouyou but couldn’t find it anywhere. Finally, with the towel in tow (how the towel teleported from the bathroom to the kitchen, Kenma didn’t know because he was sure neither he nor Shouyou touched it since Kenma prepared it last night), Kenma turned to go back into Shouyou’s room, only to stop in the doorway and sigh.

Shouyou was out like a candle, lying on top of the covers, still clad in the clothes he flew in, snoring lightly, his features pliant and soft. Kenma hesitated, wondering what to do - should he wake him up? But looking at him at that moment Kenma didn’t think anything or anyone would be capable of waking Shouyou up at all. Kenma dropped the towel right by the futon so Shouyou would see it the moment he woke up and went to fetch a blanket, which he then draped over Shouyou who snuggled into it after a second or two, mumbling incoherently, a frown forming and then dissolving into utmost, softest peace.

Shouyou’s phone was blinking red by his discarded bag, the battery dying, so Kenma plugged it in. He squatted by the futon, looking at Shouyou’s sleeping face, thinking that it’s only for a moment, that a moment like this might not happen ever again, so he should just seize the chance and enjoy that glimpse at the side of Shouyou that he has never really been privy to before-

But it wasn’t right to stare when the subject of Kenma’s study was out like a light and unable to object to be observed so intently, so Kenma got up. With the final look at the disarray of Shouyou’s things left half packed and half unpacked, and strewn around the room, Kenma gently eased the doors almost closed, leaving them open just a crack.

  
  


When Kenma himself went to bed hours later that day, Shouyou was still soundly asleep; but in the morning the doors to Shouyou’s room were wide open and Shouyou himself was nowhere in sight, except there was a smell of cooking permeating the house. More relying on his nose than anything else, Kenma was led to the kitchen.

The rice cooker was steaming, something was sizzling on the stove, and Shouyou was standing by the window, looking out into the quiet street. His back was so straight, head held up high as he had gotten into a habit of doing a few years before, shoulders wider than Kenma remembered them to be from when Shouyou had visited two years before.

The feeling of fullness, a rightness of the world of sorts, wrapped around Kenma’s chest, making him a little breathless. That snapshot, a split second in time, was when elements of Kenma’s world fell into the places they were meant to be in. The directions of the events that led to this point were what they were supposed to be and everything, every atom in existence, was in the correct, most opportune position.

It was simply right, that moment.

He was staring, he realized, and Shouyou, feeling that stare directed at him, turned his head to catch Kenma’s eye.

“Kenma! Good morning,” Shouyou said cheerfully. “Breakfast?” he asked, indicating the table standing in the middle of the kitchen with a flourish of an invitation.

  
  


Shouyou was a surprisingly good cook, Kenma couldn’t help thinking.

Once they were done, Shouyou enamored with the fact that Kenma dutifully ate at least a bit of everything that Shouyou made, they were both standing by the sink, washing up.

“How is the backstreet gang?” Shouyou asked, glancing out through the kitchen window.

There were four- no, five; another one, a bobtail with half an ear missing joined in recently, hesitantly hanging back farther away from the rest - cats that mingled around the house, and which have appeared in the backyard some days after Kenma moved in. At first they had ran when they saw him go out into the strip of the garden at the back of the house, but a few bowlfuls of canned cat food later they had nearly fought each other for the privilege of rubbing against his shins as soon as he stepped out.

Only the skittish bobtail had been hanging back, approaching to sniff at the empty bowls after the rest of the cats were done eating. Kenma took to putting out a smaller bowl just for this one cat after the rest were gone. It did eat from it but still ran as hell if Kenma as much as took a step into its direction.

Shouyou had met them all, except for the bobtail, when he had came to visit Kenma in Tokyo before.

“They’re fine, I guess,” Kenma said. “It’s almost time for morning feeding so you can see for yourself.”

  
  


The dishes they washed were put away on the rack. Shouyou followed Kenma outside and sat at the step leading to the glass doors overlooking the garden, watching Kenma shuffle carefully through the mingling mass of the small, fluffy, furiously meowing bodies. “What about that one?” he asked suddenly. He was pointing in the direction of the small tree in the corner of the garden, where on a thin branch the bobtail squatted down, observing the morning feeding ritual from afar.

Kenma put down the bowls of cat food he was carrying and brushed his hair back from his face. “It wilder than the rest. I put out a separate bowl for it after the rest are done.”

It didn’t take long for the bowls to be empty again. The cats, seeming to remember Shouyou, readily approached him, asking for attention, but all of them seemed intent on leaving soon after, to attend whatever business in the neighbourhood they deemed important.

The only one left was the bobtail. It waited a few minutes after Kenma placed a fresh bowl just for it before moving closer.

The bobtail ate slowly, carefully. Shouyou pointedly didn’t look at it, instead gazing somewhere into the distance beyond the fence, Kenma watching all that perspired, wondering what Shouyou was planning on, sitting there unmoving and quiet. When the cat was done, it stepped away from the bowl and crouched down, staring at Shouyou and Kenma. Shouyou glanced at it and away again.

As if calculating something, the bobtail sat still for a moment longer and then made a beeline for the glass doors. It stopped to sniff at Shouyou’s shoes.

Shouyou chirped and both Kenma and the bobtail startled to look at him, at which Shouyou snickered. He blinked slowly at the cat and extended his finger; the bobtail sniffed at it too, before rubbing his cheek against it and jumping straight into Shouyou’s lap, where it wound itself into a pretzel and pressed against Shouyou’s stomach.

Kenma stared in total lack of comprehension. “How?” he asked.

“This one is just shy. A little encouragement was all it needed. Right?” he said to the bobtail, scratching behind the cat’s ear as its eyes closed and it purred so loudly that Kenma heard it as clearly as if he had his ear pressed against the cat’s stomach.

  
  


Later that day, Kenma was supposed to attend some lectures but he readily ignored them in favour of making sure Shouyou was settling in. Shouyou was going through his things, with Kenma sitting cross-legged a distance away in Shouyou’s room, looking on idly as Shouyou put a shirt here and a bag there, and a bundle of socks somewhere else. 

“Ah!” Shouyou cried out suddenly. “I forgot yesterday. I’ve got a gift for you.” He rummaged through his bag, before triumphantly pulling out something wrapped in a glossy foil. He handed it to Kenma, watching with rapt attention while Kenma unwrapped it.

Kenma stared at the small statue of Rio’s Jesus. Inexplicably, it stared back, with something like surprise. Whoever did the model for it did a terrible job when it came to the expression on the Jesus face, rendering it eternally surprised rather than serene. “Thank you,” Kenma said, at a loss. 

“It’s too bad I already passed the gift I had for Tsukki to Tadashi. What I got for Tsukki was the greatest gift of all,” Shouyou said thoughtfully. “I wanted to show it to you. Maybe I have a photo?”

There was, in fact, a photo saved on Shouyou’s phone. And the only way Kenma was able to describe the shirt intended for Tsukishima was ‘loud’. 

“It’s terrible,” Shouyou himself said, appearing delighted and amazed at his own gift-giving genius. “Tsukki is going to be so disgusted. It’s too bad he didn’t come to pick me up from the airport with Tadashi - said he was ‘busy’ or something, as if anything could ever be more important than me coming back, can you believe that,” Shouyou said, shaking his head. “I really wanted to see his reaction when he sees the shirt for the first time, but there is still hope - I’m going to ask him why he isn’t wearing it the next time I see him in person.”

Kenma glanced at Shouyou askance. The slightly evil gleam in Shouyou’s eyes betrayed that part of his character that could be, theoretically, considered less than immaculate.

“Please take a photo of his face when you ask him that. For posterity,” Kenma said.

Shouyou laughed.

  
  


In the evening the bobtail didn’t hesitate to come closer much quicker than anytime before, but it did look between the bowl, Kenma, and the empty spot on the step in front of the glass doors where Shouyou had sat earlier in the day rather pointedly. But Shouyou was out of the house, running errands.

“I know,” Kenma said. “I wish he was here, too.”

The cat peered through the doors as if expecting Shouyou to be hiding inside and then sat on the step next to Kenma, who after a moment of hesitation copied Shouyou and offered the bobtail his hand. The cat sniffed at it and rubbed its cheek on it, and then curled up flush against Kenma’s hip, warm and soft.

Not for the first time Kenma wondered if that was another one of Shouyou’s magic abilities - that seemingly effortless way he connected others, both to himself and by bridging the gaps between other people, and animals too as it seemed, gently and at times not so gently pushing their pieces together until they fit as if that was the most natural and organic thing in the world, and until it seemed like it hasn’t been any other way before - until it felt like the connection has existed since the moment before the beginning of time, since before stars exploded and made all that is known.

The bobtail started purring and Kenma slowly stroke its back, staring out into the darkening sky above the fence at the end of the small, small garden in which the plants and the grass grew as they pleased. Maybe he should clean the garden up one of these days - he didn’t know how to take care of plants and a garden, but what is the internet for if not for looking up things one didn’t know.

Who knew, maybe the internet would even have an answer to a pressing query that Kenma has been thinking about for a while - ‘how to get better at hiding your intense crush on a friend’.

“Shouyou will be be back in the soon,” Kenma said. The bobtail’s ears twitched.

  
  


Kenma was in the middle of recording his weekly video when Shouyou came home. Kenma slid off his headphones and turned around just in time to see Shouyou try to sheepishly tiptoe out of view.

“It’s a video, I’ll edit it out,” Kenma said.

“Oh, that’s good.” Shouyou sighed in relief. “I thought I trampled into your streaming hours.”

“That’s scheduled for tomorrow.” Kenma hesitated. A thought appeared, not unwelcome, in his mind. “Hey, Shouyou?”

Shouyou poked his head back into the room.

“Wanna be a guest on the stream while you’re staying here? The videos too, if you want? That one we did two years ago blew up,” Kenma said.

Shouyou’s eyes widened. “For real? Holy shit, yeah! Finally, my chance to be famous on the internet too.”

  
  


“Ready?” Kenma asked the next day. Two minutes until the stream was scheduled to begin.

Shouyou wriggled in the chair next to Kenma, looking on the verge of getting cold feet. “What do I do?” he asked, glancing between the camera and Kenma uncertainly.

Kenma considered that. Most often than not people put on an act when posting things, inventing a persona specifically for that. But with Shouyou Kenma couldn’t help but think that it wouldn’t work. If the world at large didn’t like Shouyou the way he was, then there was something very wrong with the world and Shouyou being Shouyou had nothing to do with it.

“Just be yourself,” Kenma said. He whirled back to the desk and pressed start. “Hey, it’s good to see you all again today, hope you’re doing well. A pretty special guest is joining us today, maybe you remember him from a while ago-”

  
  


An hour later Kenma pressed stop and leaned back in his chair, rubbing at his eyes. 

“Wow,” Shouyou said, still staring at the screen. The stream ended, but the comments were still flowing in and Shouyou was reading them with apparent wonder. “This is amazing. Is it always like this?”

“Sometimes.”

“Wow,” Shouyou repeated. “And people are writing nice things about me too! I thought they wouldn’t like me butting into your thing much, but it doesn’t seem to be that way.”

“I would be surprised if anyone was against it. You’re a natural,” Kenma said matter-of-factly.

Shouyou swiveled in the chair, looking thoughtful. “Are you saying that if everything else fails, I have a future in online entertainment? I don’t think my parents are going to like that much more than they liked it when I said I want to play volleyball professionally, a sport where the taller the player, the better.”

Kenma snorted, biting at the inside of his cheek.

“It’s cool, I guess. Creating content online,” Shouyou continued, staring off into the distance. “But if there is even a smidge of a chance that I’ll make it in pro volleyball, I’m always going to take that over anything else.” He turned back to the screen and scrolled through the comment some more. “You’re awesome, Kenma. You know that, right?”

“For posting videos online?”

“For everything. Like the fact that you have a whole company. What was that you said about the revenue from last year?” 

“Good growth,” Kenma said. “40% rise since last year.”

“Yeah, no,” Shouyou said, shaking his head. “You’re a real deal. A real entrepreneur.”

Kenma cringed. “Ugh. Don’t even say that word, not in this house. All I can think about when I hear it is 'rise and grind'. Just no. Stop it.”

Shouyou laughed out loud. “That’s literally what you do!” He started to tick off his fingers. “A student, CEO of your own company, content creator, pro gamer, it’s a full time grind - it’s a wonder you have time to sleep.” Shouyou stopped, momentarily suspicious. “You do sleep, right?”

“Once in a while,” Kenma said. 

Kenma was doing what he needed to do and what he wanted to do, that was all. There wasn’t more to it than that, and he said as much, turning to face away from Shouyou; but he could still feel the burn of Shouyou’s awed gaze as it bore into the back of Kenma’s head. “You’re amazing,” Shouyou said.

The heat of embarrassment crept up Kenma’s neck. With anyone else Kenma would’ve dismissed it as words born of politeness and courtesy, but with Shouyou… Shouyou was too honest for that. Shouyou, it seemed, was able to run through the chapters of his life with an open mind and open heart, true to himself.

What did that feel like, Kenma wondered not for the first and not for the last time, to let everything, or nearly everything, simply spill out?

“I’m not,” Kenma said, rubbing his foot against the back of his calf and playing with the string of his hoodie. “It’s normal.”

“Normal for you, maybe.”

Out of the corner of his eye Kenma saw that Shouyou dropped on the desk, lying with his hands hanging off the edge and his cheek plastered to the top, watching Kenma.

“I wanna be as cool as you one day,” Shouyou said. His expression turned dreamy as he got lost in his fantasy. “Be able to pretty much fund someone’s career just because I can.”

“Who are you going to fund?”

Shouyou hummed in thought. “All the people fighting against the odds.”

“So you want to be a billionaire a couple times over, then.”

“That wouldn’t be so bad,” Shouyou said and grinned. 

  
  


Maybe he was growing codependent. He has gotten so used to not coming to an empty house. 

Shouyou has gone off to Miyagi to see his family and ever since he left, Kenma has been going around the house feeling a bit lost. Though Shouyou had been back in Japan for barely a week, ever since he has started inhabiting the room at the end of the hallway the house has somehow seemed to gain life.

But now, when he was gone, to Kenma his house felt way too empty to bear. Emptier than ever before, and so strangely quiet.

Shouyou’s presence filled some gap in Kenma’s life that he wasn’t even truly aware of before, not until it was gone. He really has grown even more attached than he was before, and Kenma didn’t think that was possible.

He needed a distraction. As he fed the backstreet cat gang and looked around the unkept, dilapidated backyard, an idea sprouted.

The tools and seeds arrived two days later.

  
  
  
  



End file.
